The second iteration of this Texas-style barbecue is every bit as fine as the Red Hook original, with a slightly different menu and an even more casual vibe. Much of the seating is in a canvas pavilion out back between buildings, with a beer-garden atmosphere. Inspired by a New York classic dish and then improving on it, Hometown’s pastrami is a thing of beauty — garnet in color, thickly rimmed with spices, and smoky as hell, in contrast to the mild smokiness of most pastramis. Don’t miss it.

Japan Village is the compact food court that abuts a Sunrise Mart, the sprawling Japanese grocery store spawned by an East Village original. Ten counters offer the full range of Japanese comfort food, including ramen, rice balls, tempura, eel and other bento boxes, and creative desserts including green tea tiramisu. There’s even a bar called Bar.

Blink and you’ll walk right past Reina de la Nube, a small Ecuadorian restaurant and bakery located a block away from Sunset Park’s main subway station. Despite the tiny storefront, there’s a lot going on inside its four walls: The all-day spot serves a steady stream of breakfast, lunch, and dinner platters of chicken, pork, fish and shrimp, and stews, with fried plantains, rice, eggs, and salad filling out the edges of each plate. After (or before) your meal, stock up on empanadas and sweet breads from the case of baked goods, all made on-premises at Reina de la Nube’s bakery.

This small Turkish cafe and coffee house once specialized in ground-meat kofte kebabs fashioned into baguette sandwiches, but the instant the twirling gyro cylinder was installed in the window, everything changed. Yes, Turkish salads and bread dips of scintillating quality are available — paired with puffy grilled bread served steaming hot — but the chicken-gyro in a pita is one of the best (and one of the best deals) in town, especially when topped with plenty of yogurt and hot sauce. Cap off the meal with a square of soft, sweet, not-too-sticky baklava.

This rollicking spot specializes in an endless variety of fresh-squeezed juices (you’ll feel like you’re at a juice stand in a zocalo) and tortas, offered in dozens of permutations and finished in a sandwich press. Some feature ingredients like hot dogs and American bacon, mixed with more traditional Mexican meats, along with generous wedges of ripe avocado, mayo, and an assortment of cheeses. You won’t walk away hungry. Very highly recommended, and there’s seating, too.

Associated with a fleet of famous taco trucks, one of which parks just south of the Green-Wood Cemetery, this handsome Mexican cafe specializes in Pueblan food, but offers a substantial pan-national menu as well. Favorite dishes include tripe cemitas (a round sandwich with cheese and avocado flavored with an herb called papalo), scrambled eggs with prickly-pear cactus, chicken huaraches, and white pozole served with two tostadas. Dig the mural of snow-capped mountains and stampeding stallions.

The King of Fish, or El Rey Del Pescado, doesn’t mince words in its title, and it’s got a multi-page seafood menu and a book of cocktail pairings to back up its claim. There’s aguachile, empanadas stuffed with baby shark, tostadas topped with octopus, and six different types of shrimp platters, including habanero-lime shrimp or shrimp sautéed in garlic sauce. Don’t miss the kitchen’s newest creation: The pilin, made with a base of smashed and fried plantains topped with crab, baby shark, or shrimp, tossed with crunchy cabbage, and drizzled with multiple sauces.

Peruvian chicken at cut-rate prices arrives in Sunset Park, along with rotisserie pork ribs, South American-style Chinese stir fries and noodles, a scattering of Italian dishes, and that favorite of children — salchipapas (french fries tossed with cut-up hot dogs). But the rotisserie chicken in combinations that include salad along with fried rice, french fries, or rice and beans are what most customers get, along with the trademark green mayo dip. And don’t miss the chicken giblet soup called aguadito.

The second oldest of the city’s dedicated Vietnamese sandwich shops (the oldest is Banh Mi Saigon) is a contender for best banh mi in town. Steps from the park called Sunset Park, it offers a limited menu of sandwiches and Vietnamese snacks. Among sandwiches there are 11 blockbuster selections, of which our favorites are banh mi pate thit nguoi, with six layered meats; and banh mi ca moi, featuring canned sardines bathed in a vinegary chile sauce, perhaps the most highly flavored of all.

This was one of Sunset Park’s earliest taco stands, replacing an earlier Dominican cafe in the late 90s. The carnitas are great, whether enjoyed in a taco, tostada, burrito, or torta. The same could be said of the cueritos (pork skin), lengua (cow tongue), and the sturdy beef tripe. The modest premises are located just off the main drag of Fifth Avenue, and there’s ample outdoor seating available.

The darkened dining room, favored by young and stylishly dressed night clubbers, stays open till midnight, and the menu centers on a single Sichuan specialty (though many other northern Chinese and Sichuan options are available as apps): Whole fish cooked tableside in a square pan with a choice of sauces. Though most are identified as different types of bass, five or six species are usually available. The place may seem prohibitively expensive, but one whole fish usually feeds three.

One of the city’s most celebrated Sichuan restaurants has a colorful and cartoonish decor featuring operatic masks, and seating that’s not the most comfortable in the world. No matter, the food is top notch, with an emphasis on whole fish, steamed or fried; a wide variety of soups and noodles, including a wonderful dish of Chengdu liang fen (made from mung beans); wok-fried vegetables including the faddish green-stemmed cauliflower; and a ma po tofu dark as night and deeply flavored. Also, find the occasional Japanese dish on the menu.

It was a decade ago that small Taiwanese cafes began to appear in Sunset Park, first on Eighth Avenue and on side streets; later Seventh Avenue from 55th to 61st streets became a hotspot. Taiwan Station offers a typical menu of snacks and meals — many of the latter in a crumbed and fried vein, such as popcorn chicken and fried squid, along with broad noodles with a spicy beef sauce. Bubble teas and milk teas are another mainstay at this cheery establishment.

The focus of this small four-year-old restaurant is the famed “crossing the bridge noodles,” a Yunnan classic using mixian (rice noodles) as its base. These noodles and their piping-hot soup give a nourishing full-meal experience and a theatrical one, too, as the dozen or so ingredients are cooked tableside with a flourish, and the pale noodles are dumped in as its climax. Yun Nan Flavor Garden, which is also in the neighborhood, has been serving these noodles much longer, but Western Yunnan Crossing Bridge Noodles offers a broader menu of variations.

These days, Malaysian restaurants are few and far between, and Belacan — referring to a fermented shrimp paste used to flavor many dishes — is a longtime holdout. Maybe this makes the restaurant try harder, but many classic dishes constitute the best versions in town, including assam laksa, an unspeakably rich soup that drops shredded fish, noodles, and chiles in a soup thickened with belachan (the condiment’s more common spelling), sweetened with pineapple, and a touch of palm sugar syrup.

This narrow and basic cafe specializes in the food associated with Fujian’s Shaxian district — and there are at least three others in Sunset Park’s Chinatown. One of the dishes the region is famous for is a delicate wonton stuffed with tenderized pork leg, giving it a bouncy and chewy texture. It is traditionally eaten with a dish of egg noodles slicked with peanut-butter sauce, and both dishes are available at Yumi Delicacies.

This obscurely located food court — look for the squarish entrance with plastic strips hanging down in the middle of the block — has been hit hard by COVID-19. Still, six great stalls of an original 10 remain, with plenty of well-spaced seating. One great counter is Guang Fu, long known for its Shanghai soup dumplings in various permutations; they do many other dumplings, as well. But the handmade noodles are also wonderful, including any of the northern Chinese dishes featuring fermented bean paste from Shandong.